1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to annotating a development artifact. Specifically, under the present invention, a development artifact can be annotated with information on one or more collaborative sessions regarding the development artifact.
2. Background Art
Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), such as Websphere® Studio Application Developer offered by International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. of Armonk, N.Y., provide the primary workplace for completing a project, such as the development of a software product. To this extent, a typical IDE provides tools to manage and manipulate several types of development artifacts. For example, in software development, development artifacts can include models, source code files, function libraries, tasks, test cases, activities, etc.
Frequently, multiple individuals contribute to completing any given project. In this case, two or more individuals may collaborate regarding one or more of the development artifacts. For example, two software developers may discuss a particular section of source code. To date, in order to collaborate, individuals must use a collaborative approach that is provided apart from the IDE. Typical collaborative approaches include an in-person conversation, electronic mail, a telephone conversation, a discussion forum, instant messaging (e.g., text chat, voice chat), and the like.
Each of these collaborative approaches has several drawbacks. In particular, each approach requires that the individuals leave the context of the IDE environment. As a result, time is wasted in leaving and returning to the IDE environment, and project information managed by the IDE may not be fully exploited during the collaboration. Further, a record of the collaboration may not be saved and/or may not be readily linked with the development artifact that was discussed. As a result, knowledge that is obtained as a result of the collaboration may be forgotten and/or may not be efficiently disseminated to one or more other individuals contributing to the project.
Within existing IDE environments, several approaches can be used to incorporate some record of the collaboration into the project. For example, an activity tracking system, such as Rational® ClearQuest® offered by IBM Corp., can be used to manage various project-related activities. However, this approach requires an individual to spend additional time in entering a report, and may be overly formal and structured for many collaborations. Further, a textual comment can be added when a development artifact is “checked in” or “checked out” of an artifact management system, such as Rational® ClearCase® offered by IBM Corp. This approach is limited since the comment can only be entered when interacting with the artifact management system, which may occur at a time that is remote from a particular collaboration. Moreover, the collaboration can only be linked to one or more development artifacts, and not to a particular region of an artifact that was discussed during collaboration. Still further, the content of the collaboration can be included in the development artifact itself (e.g., as a comment in source code). However, in addition to being time consuming and occurring apart from the collaboration, this approach may not be desirable when the development artifact is to be provided to customers.
As a result, a need exists for a solution for annotating a development artifact. In particular, a need exists for a method, system and program product that can record a collaborative session between two or more individuals and associate the collaborative session with the corresponding development artifact. To this extent, there exists a need for an IDE that incorporates collaboration functionality, and a project that includes collaboration data that is associated with one or more corresponding development artifacts.